The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears is a story of the immigrant experience in Washington DC as seen through the eyes of Sepha Stephanos, an Ethiopian compelled to leave his country for political asylum in the U.S. He is the owner of a nigh-well moribund grocery store in a poor, largely African American neighborhood in the Logan Circle area of the city. For 17 years, he has managed to make a living for himself, first in Silver Spring MD (where he lived in an apartment with his uncle for a couple of years before settling on living in an apartment in Washington, not far from his business.)

Life for Sepha, it becomes clear as the reader becomes immersed in the novel, has been no crystal stair. Two fellow Africans - Joseph, a Congolese, who once harbored lofty ambitions of pursuing a degree at the University of Michigan, but has since resigned himself to being a waiter at a top flight Washington hotel; and Ken, a Kenyan, who, working as an engineer for a firm, seems to be the embodiment of the immigrant who has "made good" and realized the American Dream - are Sepha's closest friends. Both of them share Sepha's soured nostalgia and longing for Africa.

All the while, there are changes afoot in Sepha's neighborhood. A manifestation of these changes is represented by the arrival of a white woman (Judith) and her biracial preteen daughter (Naomi) in the neighborhood, who buys a dilapidated manor house and restores it to its former glory. A friendship develops among Sepha, Judith, and Naomi. It seems that Sepha's life is brightening up. Yet as gentrification makes a toehold in the neighborhood, age-old resentments bubble to the surface, and Sepha's friendship with Judith and Naomi becomes a candle whose light burns bright but is soon snuffed out. I was hopeful of a "happily ever after" from this novel. But I felt sad and sobered because the novel presented more of a true picture of what the immigrant experience often is - an experience fraught with struggle, disappointment, and hope.

The following admission from Sepha made a deep impression on me:

"...How long did it take for me to understand that I was never going to return to Ethiopia again? It seems as if there should have been a particular moment when the knowledge settled in. For at least the first two years that I was here, I was so busy passing my mother, brother, father, and friends in the aisles of grocery stores, in parks and restaurants, that at times it hardly felt as if I had really left. I searched for familiarity wherever I went. I found it in the buildings and in the layout of the streets. I saw glimpses of home whenever I came across three or four roads that intersected at odd angles, in the squat glass office buildings caught in the sun's glare. ... I used to let my imagination get the best of me."

As someone who knows the Washington DC area rather well, this novel resonated very much with me. I recommend it to anyone interested in learning about the immigrant experience in the U.S. on a personal level.